First Thursday this month is August 5th.

It will be at the usual time (!2.00 GMT, 13.00 British Summer Time and Nigerian TIme, 14.00 Central European Summer Time. 15.00 East African Time and East European Summer Time, 17.30 IST, and uncomfortably early in the morning for people in most parts America - our apologies for that.)

***************** Important Change ******************

It will NOT be in the chat room. It will be a public skype Instant messaging group chat instead.

The reason - It seems likely that the chatroom will be closed this month. We have a long unbroken run of First Thursday meetings and don't want to cancel, but we don't want people turning up as usual only to discover it is not working. So we are turning this problem around. Instead of cancelling we are taking this as an opportunity to try something different. We apologise for any incovenience this will cause, and hope that normal service will be resumed later in the year.

Getting skype

Obviously you will need Skype on your computer in order to join us. It doesn't cost anything - just go to http://www.skype.com/intl/en/get-skype/on-your-computer/  choose the version that matches your computer and download it.

Finding the chat

It seems I cannot set this yet, so I can't give you the link now. If you know you want to join please skype me and I will skype the link to you when I know it. My skype ID is pamelamclean. I will probably tweet it too, and will try to send it out as another post just before the session starts.
The agenda? It's going to be casual - after all it is holiday time.

I am not making any plans for a set agenda - after all it is holiday time and we are meeting in a new space.  Maybe we'll just experiment with the space - and chat about holiday times and customs in our different countries. 

Different people different interests

We may find we get different people turning up because it is holiday time -  and that will affect our conversation. I hope that we will get some visitors who are usually not able to join us because they are teaching (or being taught). On the other hand, if people  are not teaching (or being taught) perhaps they will be away on holiday and no-where near a computer. If you know in advance that you will be joining us, or that you definitely won't be I would love to know beforehand. Please email me - pamela.mclean(at)dadamac.net

Holiday news

I don't usually go away on holiday - except for "working holidays" - but this year I did. It was a family holiday and we went to a beautiful and historic part of the UK called Iron Bridge - a World Heritage Site. You can see some photos here and read something about it http://www.ironbridgeguide.info/ironbridge_tour/index.shtml. Maybe you have some links to photos you would like to share with us. Let's relax and do something a different as it is holiday time (of course if you want a serious conversation that is fine as well - and with Skype it is easy to break away and start a separate private conversation if you want to).

Comparing Skype open discussions and the chat room

It will be different using Skype. For a start I'm not expecting the lovely personal colours that we have in the chat room. I like them. They help us to keep track of different ideas. With personal colours it is fairly easy to follow individual people, even when several parallel conversations are going on. On the other hand some others features may be better using Skype. For instance you can see if any people are in the process of typing responses (or if everyone is waiting for everyone else so, absolutely nothing is going to happen).

We hold Dadamac UK-Nigeria team meetings on skype, and they are comparatively formal. However they are not open to outsiders, and people in the regular team know what kind of meeting it will be. At those meetings we do always have a set agenda, and a chairman, and people now know what to expect. First Thursdays are different because people are free to drop in and so the meetings are not so formal.

Please join me if you can - even if it is just for a short while - so we can enjoy each other's company and experiment with a Skype Public Instant Messaging session.

Pamela